Smart Working

Agile work is also growing in Italy, but the percentage of membership is still low compared to the European average and the United States.

According to the 2017 report of the Smart Working Observatory at the Politecnico di Milano, the percentage of Italian employees who work in agile mode is just 8%.

Italian regulation number 81 of 22 May 2017 introduced the concept of agile work, one of the possibilities for carrying out the duties of an employee both for a fixed and an indefinite period. Agile work must be defined in the contract and concerns both the private and public sectors.

The smart worker enjoys the same rights as workers on site.

Direct consequence of digitization, agile work allows workers to carry out their activities without restrictions of place and with greater flexibility in the management of time, adopting a view to achieving the objectives.

Agile work presents undoubted advantages for both the worker and the organization:

greater balance between work and private life in terms of time and quality of life;

optimization of travel time to reach and leave the workplace;

decrease of absenteeism;

savings for organization on site costs;

increase in productivity;

it is a choice of eco-sustainability as it reduces atmospheric pollution;

increases motivation to work as it improves the quality of life of workers.

However, to be honest, it is important to also point out two limits of agile work:

risk of isolation in terms of relationships;

the connection continues to the network.

To make up for the first point it is necessary that the organization be able to decline the worker’s soft digital skills, encouraging the relational element for online team work.

To control the phenomenon of continuous connection, which would expose the worker to an excessive number of hours on the network, there is the so-called disconnection right that limits the discretionality in the use of the typical smart working time.